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“I’m not talking about the witch! There’s someone else here. Someone else in our territory.”
Moon’s brain raced as he tried to figure out what to tell Chen to make him calm down. He was pointing his sword at his friends…who were looking guilty as fuck. Shit! What the hell did they do?
“I feel it, too, Chen!”
Moon whipped his head at the sound of Zhang Junjie’s voice, followed by the heavy clang of the gate closing across the driveway. He took up position near the end of the driveway to stop whatever it was from escaping.
“I see nothing.” Moon turned at the sound of Sean’s voice to find him standing on one of the roof peaks, his feet balanced on the curved tiles, a sword in his hand.
Okay, this was getting crazy. Even though he couldn’t see a weapon in Junjie’s hand, he didn’t doubt the vampire was armed. Meimei stood beside him with a fucking spear. A goddamn spear in her hand, looking as if she were ready to turn his friends into kebabs.
“Mad? Red? Sky? What the fuck is going on?” Moon shouted. He needed to get this under control before someone got hurt.
“Ummm…” Sky began with a wince. Both Red and Mad had their mouths closed tight, offering nothing, but those bastards weren’t meeting his eyes any longer either.
Chen muttered something under his breath and threw out his left hand. Another icy blast shot from his fingertips, but this time it was frost covering everything on the ground while fat flakes of snow swirled through the air in a thick blanket. It was rather ingenious. If someone was invisible, this would make them instantly visible. The only problem was that it was fucking cold.
Moon huddled up against the vampire, pressing his cheek to his back while wrapping his arms around his waist. Anything for warmth. Over by the cars, he could hear his three friends cursing and crying at the sudden burst of frigid cold. It was almost May, and it had been a pleasant spring night. Each of them had worn a jacket while Moon was still in the light button-down shirt he’d worn to Phoenix.
“Ch-Chen, I don’t see anything,” Moon stammered, his teeth chattering.
“I’m not wrong. Someone is here,” his vampire snarled.
“Let me try,” Xiao Dan called as he stepped out the front door with Ming Yu at his side. “Chen, cease the snow.”
Chen nodded and straightened, lowering his left hand to his side. The blowing snowflakes stopped immediately, but as the frost was still melting away, the world rippled and shifted.
Moon blinked several times, fighting to get his eyes to focus. And when they did, he couldn’t help but jump away from Chen. They weren’t in front of the house in Connecticut any longer. They weren’t anywhere he recognized.
And the Chen before him was…different.
“Chen…ge,” he whispered. The man who stood in front of him wasn’t wearing neat gray slacks and a white sweater, but an elegant white robe with delicate embroidery on the sleeves and collar. His hair was no longer cut short, but it cascaded down his back in an inky black waterfall, while a simple silver xiaoguan rested on the top of his head. Even the ice sword was replaced with a silver sword of exquisite craftsmanship.
“Didn’t you wish to see me with long hair?” Chen inquired. And at last, those perfect peach lips quirked, one corner higher in a mocking smile.
“I…yes…but…what? Where?”
“Glamour. It’s Shixiong’s gift. This is a field near my home, and this is what I looked like while I was human,” Chen explained. He motioned to the sun-kissed golden field that surrounded them. Green trees swayed in a soft breeze he couldn’t feel, and birds darted from tree to tree. It was beautiful, but Moon jerked his eyes to Chen, not wanting to waste a second looking at anything else.
Moon’s head was so clogged with questions, but not one could make it to his tongue. He stepped over to Chen and reached out, wanted to touch the fabric of his robe, to run his fingers through that silken hair, even if it wasn’t real any longer.
“And there is our intruder,” Xiao Dan announced. Moon’s eyes followed where he was pointing near the gate, close to Junjie and Meimei. There was a strange ripple in the air that appeared human shaped.
Instead of racing to attack the figure, Chen stepped in front of Moon, placing his body in between the unknown person and Moon. As Moon lifted his hand to touch Chen’s hair, a sharp yip echoed from a short distance away. A heartbeat later, a large red fox with a bouquet of puffy, white-tipped tails bounded across the driveway. The creature darted straight for the figure that was trapped between Meimei and Junjie.
“The huli jing,” he breathed. There was no mistaking it for a regular fox. Its body alone seemed too big for a normal fox. Not to mention its many tails. If they would remain still for a second, he was sure he would count nine.
